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Tuesday, 1 December 2015

HK OK!

As I type this, I'm sitting in my
dressing room awaiting my final show in Hong Kong. I say dressing
room, it's a top floor balcony room at the famous Jumbo King
restaurant (google image search it now!). There's a warm breeze
coming off the water as I look up from my laptop at the boats
pop-popping by in the harbour. I feel like Chow Yun Fat, having a
peaceful and reflective cup of tea before capping a bunch of
gangsters in elegantly choreographed slo-mo. I'm not though, I'm a
trick-throwing gagman who, by dumb luck and good fortune, has just
had a rather excellent week.

I arrived 8 days ago, to do two
headline cabaret spots at two gigs, with a week in between them in
which to explore the city that birthed so much culture I love, but
which I had never visited. I'm met from the airport and unloaded into
my home for a week, a hotel with a view from the window that seems to
unreal to be actual.

First things first, though, and I got
taken to the Hong Kong convention centre to meet everyone, soundcheck
and rehearse for my show. It's all smooth, and the event producer has
a badass haircut, so we're all good. It's a James Bond themed night,
so there are video screens showing montages of classic moments, a
huge gold 007 backdrop, bars pushing vodka martinis.. its all very
expensive and fun. My opening acts for tonight are a chanteuse
singing Bond themes and a bona fide Hong Kong stunt team
somersaulting off the stage and doing a fun little action sequence.
Then its me, and fighting jet lag like Roger Moore fighting Jaws (and
by that I mean unconvincingly) I do my thing. Seems to go great, they
clap and laugh in all the right places. Like Lorne Michaels famously
says, “It's easier when they laugh”.

And then I'm back at my hotel, and that
view has turned into a real world screen saver of Blade Runner
twinkly lights and video billboards. Totally future-beautiful. I have
a little nightcap, toast to my reflection in the window, and plan my
week. I've got some things that I want to do here.

It's a busy town, but somehow doesn't
feel aggressive. Not sure how they did that – every other place
I've been to where bustling people are packed tightly into each
others personal spaces, there's at least a slight feeling of “grrr”,
but I just didn't get that here. Then there's the smells. Oh my god,
the smells – like a patchwork quilt of
invisible-until-you-walk-into-them signifiers. So many, and so
different. Gorgeous wafts of food cooking, spices, something hot and
sweet, something meaty and crackling, and then a hellish rotting
stench that might knock you over with its sudden pungentness, were it
not short-lived and closely followed by smells anew. I thought it
might be like this, and I thought I'd hate it, but I didn't. I grew
quickly to love the smells. They're somehow evidence of a living
city, of stuff going on. I think I'd rather have them all, than a
homogenised none of them.

The main impression my first few
expeditions into getting lost in the city left me with was a simple
one, though. I've rarely seen a city with such a perfect balance of
the old and the new. Gleaming luxury cars share the roads with
clanging hundred-year old trams. Beautiful, placid temples with sweet
incense-thick air sit in “rest gardens”, just a few paces from
the busiest high-end shopping streets. Shiny glass skyscrapers
half-built, held up by bamboo scaffolding lashed together with rope.
And you won't find a living analogy to this city better than that.

I do some touristy stuff. I ride the
steepest funicular railway in the world up to “The Peak” - the
best view of the city, and its quite the bobby dazzler. The rest
though is the usual shopping centre banality. I mean really, who goes
to the most famous view in one of the most exciting cities in the
world, and buys a Bubba Gump hat? I walked back into town and had a
big bowl of gorgeous chewy noodles and some fried pumpkin. I don't
regret not buying the hat, but goddamn I'm glad I didn't miss the
noodles.

Went to a bunch of markets. I do love a
good market. When I was a kid, a couple of times a week me and my mum
would walk the 15 minutes up the road to Edmonton Green market and
meet my grandma for lunch in the co-op cafe. I have very happy
childhood memories of Edmonton market – the smells of fresh
produce, the butcher, the flower stall, even the mothbally smell of
cheap clothes. The sounds of stallholders yelling how many, exactly,
one could expect for “A PAAAAAAAHND”. Markets are a comfort zone
and a happy place, and Hong Kong has some doozys. Meat, pastries,
fish, clothes and toys in the maze of streets off Hennesey Road in
Wan Chai. The ladies market in Kowloon for knock-off everything, and
scared, overwhelmed tourists being effortlessly fleeced. The Temple
Street night market for souvenirs, electronics, toys, tshirts,
gadgets, and all sorts of crazy oddments. Went to them all. Loved
them all. And don't be a rube – HAGGLE.

If you know anything about me (and if
you don't, how did you end up here reading this?), you'll know that
I'm a floozy for a nice bit of tailoring. I'm a schmutter-slut. So of
course right at the top of my HK-to-do list was getting some suits
and shirts made. A quick trip on the Star Ferry (Which, by the way,
immediately became one of my favourite things in the world. As I sit
here typing this, knowing that I'm going home tomorrow, I already
know I'll miss it. Just yesterday, as I rode it for the 8th,
and last time, I realised that, without any thought or planning, I
had a favourite place to sit. Good sign), and I'm at Sams tailors in
Kowloon being measured and consulted. I'm a suit nerd, so I'm very
clear on what I want, and choose fabric, cut, style, detailing,
lining etc. Despite everything that everyone knows about Hong Kong
tailors, I still find it insane that they'll have two bespoke suits
and two shirts, all made from scratch for me, ready in two days flat.
But two days later, as I'm scanning the walls of previous satisfied
clients (Michael Jackson, Bill Clinton, Prince Charles, DAMMIT Donald
Trump), here they are – perfect fit, exactly as asked for, and
beautifully made. That's how you get a customer for life.

The other thing I wanted to do while I
was here was touch base somehow (I wasn't really sure exactly how)
with kungfu. I've been a student of various forms of martial arts for
most of my adult life, and used to be a devoted practitioner of a few
various forms of wushu and kungfu, before moving into a little Jeet
Kune Do, and various other arts. I figured it would be a waste not to
at least try to find a little tuition of some kind while I was here.
I put out some feelers, did some research, and managed to secure a
little quality time with a couple of teachers. My take away, apart
from a few sharper techniques, and things to work on, was how kungfu
is truly considered an art here. The term “Martial arts” is used
globally, but perhaps rarely actually thought about. These are
systems of combat, of course, but that's often not completely why
they were created and developed. The people I spent time with
considered, no – assumed – that kungfu is of the same family as
painting or sculpture, a folk art, to be treated with national pride,
preserved and understood, with a legacy and history of great
practitioners who – like all great artists – invested some of
themselves into it, in order to personalise and develop it. As one of
the gentlemen I met with, through English that was not perhaps as
broken as he pretended, told me: “It's art, like painting a
portrait. Not just fighting, like painting a house. But a portrait
painter can paint a house, and it would look pretty good, huh?”.
Then he lit another cigarette. Awesome. Wisdom from a kungfu teacher
in Hong Kong? Ticked off the life list.

Other fragmented memories of the past
few days.. Let me think.. Oh yeah, whoever invented the little pastry
and hot bean curd dim sum thing? Give them the bloody nobel food
prize. That's a thing, right? Holy cats, that was the good stuff.
Along with a double espresso and egg tart, which is the correct way
to start your day. Had that so often that even though I was only in
town for a week, the coffee bar next to the hotel now know my usual.

And now we've flashed forward. The last
24 hours were a blur of crispy noodles, being on stage, packing,
checking in at the airport, and grabbing the occasional nap, all of
which brings me to the now – sitting typing this, bleary-eyed on
the last third of the six thousand mile flight home. I'm no longer in
that crazy city, my little adventures of discovery have moved into a
different part of my brain and become memories, locked and saved. All
done, achievement unlocked, game over. Months ago, when I found out
that my absurd job would be taking me to Hong Kong, I was excited,
sure – I'm always excited to be able to spend some time in a new
town – but I really didn't foresee falling in love with the place
to the extent that I did. It's noisy, smelly and busy. Go to any main
street and if you tilt your head backwards you'll struggle to see the
sky through the cacophony of signs hanging out from walls or from
wires overhead. Alleys are lined with trays of flapping gawping wet
fish, piles of crabs and fruit and vegetables of the most unlikely,
star-trek-ish design. The same market stall will sell religious
iconography right next to iphone chargers that light up and play a
tune as they give your phone juice. I'll never forget the
similarities between the rows of various beautifully carved Buddhas
in the temples and the toyshop windows crammed with equally expertly
made figurines of more modern icons – Iron Man, Kamen Rider,
Princess Leia. And talking about temples - the way the open slats in
the roof of Tin Hau temple let the incense smoke create layers upon
layers of diagonal beams of sunlight, which light up statues like
spotlights on a stage will stay with me, I think, for ever.

I always get a little self-concious
writing these pieces. I sometimes worry that they might come across
as smug, as “Hey look at my exciting showbiz life”, but that's
really not the intention. The point here is that when I was a geeky,
nerdy young teenager, with very little, prospect-wise, I found a
thing – juggling – that for whatever reason, seemed to mean
something to me. Back then, the idea that it might be able to pay the
rent, even just for a little while, seemed fantastic. Nearly thirty years later, and I am
continually slack-jawed that its given me the opportunity to have
adventures like this. To meet so many astonishing people, to have
seen to many incredible sights, to have been to places that I
genuinely would have never believed I would get the chance to go to.
So maybe that's what this blog is – letters back to the teenage me,
telling him to not be so shy and unsure, to have a little faith that
the thing that he found, despite what others may have thought,
despite obvious conventional wisdom, was...the right thing. So,
here's to having a thing.